I keep thinking that younger people reading online news or getting it from the Daily Show is what is killing newspapers. However it seems that putting classified ads on a website for free on Craigslist seems to be the culprit.
One obvious culprit for the newspaper's demise is often overlooked: Craigslist. Newspapers never made their money on selling the news - they made it by selling classified ads. Those small-print pages right behind the comic strips were their bread and butter.
Craigslist, however, which was founded in 1995, took the wanted ads online and offered them for free. As of September 2007, Craigslist had established itself in approximately 450 cities in 50 countries. In turn, newspapers lost their primary source of revenue.
The rise of Craigslist has really contributed to a drop-off in Newspaper revenue. I know multiple people that use Craigslist almost exclusively and have pretty much cancelled their newspaper subscriptions.
I mean the Honolulu Advertiser is basically AP articles, a handful of local reports, and tons of ads. If not for the Commentary and Letters sections I would not have looked in a paper in years.
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